Meet Maria.
“I love Cinderella and dancing. My favorite colors are pink and purple.”
6-year old Maria loves to play on the monkey bars, dance and color. Her prized possession is a Tinkerbell blanket that she snuggles under each night. She is quiet and soft-spoken but she beams with pride when she receives a letter from her sponsor family. Her eyes shine bright as she clutches the paper. She is learning phonics at school; she carefully sounds out the words on the page, penned with care from her loving sponsors thousands of miles away. She tucks the letter under her mattress for safe-keeping, along with her other treasures, a favorite pink shirt and a coloring book.
Through Back2Back’s Child Sponsorship Program, Maria is benefiting from a sponsorship relationship with the Osborne Family. Their sponsorship ensures Maria’s spiritual, physical, educational, emotional and social needs are met. Sponsors like the Osbornes assist us in meeting the basic physical needs of children like Maria, in addition to ensuring we’re able to address broader needs, such as counseling, medical care and tutoring.
Maria’s sponsor, Penny Osborne says, “We can’t wait to receive our quarterly letter from Maria every few months. Likewise, we value the opportunity to connect with her through our letters. My desire is simply that Maria feels loved and special. In every letter we tell her just that and also tell her that God loves her even more than we do. I want her to know that even though we are thousands of miles away, we think of her and pray for her every day. My hope is that on some level she can grasp that just as we love and adore her, she has a heavenly Father that loves her and adores her.”
Maria is just one of 163 million orphaned children in our world, but unlike many other orphans, she will wake up tomorrow knowing that her future is full of hope. She will see God’s love through her tutor after school, through her sponsor who writes her letters and visits her on mission trips, and through the Back2Back staff who encourage her spiritual growth. Maria may be physically orphaned but she is wonderfully loved.